The pleasure Hashem wants to grant us can only be truly enjoyable if we feel we earned it. If we feel incapable and undeserving and know that we are just receiving good because Hashem feels bad for us, that won’t cut it. This pleasure is supposed to be emotionally satisfying. We come close to Hashem and realize we have earned it. We realize we have done something amazing and are ecstatic! For all eternity, we see that we have accomplished and reached great heights. By putting us in this world first, Hashem gave us the opportunity to attain that feeling.
But for us to feel that we earned the reward and to be proud forever, we must do actions in this world that we will consider impressive. If success were easy, it would be cheap. If we only wanted to learn and were never challenged, we wouldn’t feel that we accomplished anything. Thus, we must toil to overcome difficult challenges. That is the point of life.
If a relative would give you a lot of money, you would be ecstatic, but you wouldn’t feel that you earned it. If he wanted you to think you did, would making you doodle for an hour first accomplish that? It would still feel like a gift. You would know your insignificant doodling did not earn you the money; you only received it because you are related to your benefactor. Similarly, to really feel we earned our reward, we must know that our job is at least somewhat challenging and that the system of judgment is fair. The fairer it is, the more we will feel we earned it.
Rabbi Orlofsky explains that this is why, as the third Rashi in Chumash relates, Hashem created the world with middas hadin (exacting judgment), and then, after deciding the world could not survive with only din, tempered the judgment by combining it with middas harachamim (mercy). Why did Hashem want to create the world with din? Why would din have been better? And Hashem knows the future and surely understood that the world could not survive with only din, so why did He create it that way?
The answer is that the more din there is, the more man would feel he earned his reward. That’s why Hashem first created the world with strict din. Then, Hashem tempered it with mercy and even placed middas harachamim first to ensure that man could handle the system of judgment. But the more din there is, the more impressive our accomplishments. Being deemed virtuous after exacting scrutiny is worth much more than being considered successful after a quick glance.
Now we can begin to understand why Hashem created issurim and punishments. By creating a system in which we can choose to do bad, Hashem enabled us to truly feel that things are fair because we can do good and gain or do bad and cause damage. That enables us to feel that we really accomplished and earned it, which makes us feel great and significant. But if we could only earn and nothing we would do would be considered bad, we would feel that we were receiving charity in disguise.